Michigan’s new Democrat Senate nominee just handed his opponents a gift they didn’t even have to ask for.
A clip from a 2020 documentary resurfaced showing Abdul El-Sayed trashing Mackinac Island, one of the most beloved destinations in the entire state he now wants to represent in Washington, DC.
And Kid Rock, a Michigan native who knows that island better than most people in America, went on Fox & Friends Weekend and let El-Sayed have it.
Kid Rock Calls It Like He Sees It From Lake Charlevoix
Speaking live via satellite from his home on Lake Charlevoix, Kid Rock did not mince words about the Democrat nominee.
“He’s an idiot,” Rock said flatly of El-Sayed.
He went after the campaign’s attempt to spin the clip as something other than what it plainly was. “They’re already trying to spin it that he was talking about the political conference up there,” Rock said. “No no no, he said, ‘I hate this place,’ and Mackinac is one of the most beautiful places in America. And don’t take my word for it, ask the millions of people who have visited.”
Kid Rock went on to describe what the island means to him personally. “It’s one of the first things I do, is take them over to Mackinac Island,” he said of visitors he brings to northern Michigan. “One of my favorite things on Earth is to end up at the Grand Hotel, which is one of the largest front porches in the world, if not the largest in America, lined with American flags. And you’re sitting there having a whiskey drink before you go to dinner, and it’s God’s Country. Every little town up here in North Michigan is like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life.”
He called El-Sayed’s response “Idiocracy Part Two,” a reference to the 2006 comedy film about a future where stupidity has become universal.
What El-Sayed Actually Said on Camera
The clip comes from How to Fix a Primary, a 2020 documentary that followed El-Sayed’s unsuccessful 2018 campaign for governor of Michigan. The footage shows him walking toward the Grand Hotel as horse-drawn carriages pass by.
“I hate Mackinac so much,” El-Sayed said in the clip.
He then joked about the island becoming his summer home if he had won the governor’s race, before adding: “Every time I’ve ever come here, I’ve hated it. Why am I here?”
The clip was posted by Michigan outlet The Midwesterner and racked up 4.7 million views on X. The conservative account End Wokeness reposted it, calling Mackinac “the most American place” in Michigan.
El-Sayed’s response to the firestorm made things worse. Rather than apologize or show any affection for the island, he took a shot at the place itself. “Not sure about ‘End Wokeness,’ but I don’t think the most ‘American place in MI’ can be a place that…bans cars,” he wrote on X.
Some journalists tried to argue he was really talking about the Mackinac Policy Conference, an annual gathering of political insiders. Michigan Young Republicans board member James Asher was not buying it, responding on X: “Brad, are you dizzy from the way you’re spinning this?”
And Kid Rock was not buying it either. “This man is saying he hates Mackinac but he has property in Dubai,” Rock said on Fox News. “We have to be very careful of these wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
That Dubai reference was not invented. El-Sayed released tax disclosures just hours before a primary debate, revealing a Dubai rental property and total assets worth up to $2.1 million, according to Fox News.
What This Race Is Really About
Kid Rock went further than the Mackinac clip. He called on former Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee and his self-described friend, to debate El-Sayed and press him on his faith. “I would implore Mike Rogers, my friend Mike Rogers to debate this man, and have him state on the record, have him pledge allegiance and acknowledge we are one nation under God, not Muhammad and to call him out and what his book says, you know, the faith they subscribe to that it says there will be no peace on earth until everyone converts to Islam,” Rock said.
Those are Kid Rock’s words, not a characterization. Whether voters in a swing state like Michigan weigh those concerns is a question the general election will eventually answer.
But the Mackinac moment is its own problem, separate from any of that. A candidate running statewide in Michigan who openly says he hates one of the state’s most treasured destinations, then doubles down by mocking the island’s famous car ban rather than walking the comment back, is not exactly running a careful campaign.
Mackinac Island draws more than a million visitors each summer. It was named the country’s Best Summer Travel Destination by USA Today readers for the third consecutive year in 2025. The Michigan governor’s official summer residence has been located there since 1945. Generations of Michigan families have vacationed there, gotten engaged there, taken their kids there. It is not a political abstraction.
El-Sayed won the Democrat primary by defeating establishment-backed Representative Haley Stevens in what NBC News described as “the most expensive Senate primary in American history,” with outside spending topping $65 million. He drew campaign trail support from Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). His platform calls for Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and ending all US military aid to Israel.
But his first major news cycle as the Democrat nominee was not about any of those policy fights. It was about a six-year-old documentary clip of him complaining about one of the most beloved places in the state, followed by a response that managed to make the story bigger.
Kid Rock, who has been a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump for years, did not need to work very hard to make El-Sayed look out of touch. El-Sayed did most of that work himself.
And the general election in Michigan has not even started yet.
Sources: Mediaite, Detroit News, Washington Times, Fox News, The Midwesterner (via X), Twitchy, Britannica, Fox News (Dubai property disclosure), NBC News, Bridge Michigan